Nuclear medicine employs radioactive material for therapy and diagnostic imaging. Positron emission tomography (PET) is one type of diagnostic imaging, which utilizes doses of radiopharmaceutical, for example, generated by elution within a radioisotope generator, that are injected, or infused into a patient. The infused dose of radiopharmaceutical is absorbed by cells of a target organ, of the patient, and emits radiation, which is detected by a PET scanner, in order to generate an image of the organ. An example of a radioactive isotope, which may be used for PET, is Rubidium-82 (produced by the decay of Strontium-82); and an example of a radioisotope generator, which yields a saline solution of Rubidium-82, via elution, is the CardioGen-82® available from Bracco Diagnostics Inc. (Princeton, N.J.). A PET scanner in combination with infused doses of radiopharmaceuticals may also be employed to quantify blood flow rate, for example, through the coronary arteries of a patient.
Set up, maintenance and operational procedures for infusion systems that both generate and inject doses of radiopharmaceuticals are relatively involved in order to assure the safety and efficacy of each injected dose for the patient. Efficiency in carrying out these procedures is highly desirable for technical personnel, who work with these systems on a routine basis and would like to avoid unnecessarily prolonged exposure to radioactive radiation. Thus there is a need for new system configurations that facilitate more efficient set up, maintenance and operation.